Neighbor News
Award Winning Volunteers to host a Rwandan Youth
National award winning volunteers will host a Rwandan student this summer to exchange cultural and ideas and promote their mission of peace
Teachpluralism, a social justice program from Washington DC has sponsored a Rwandan student, Jean Ntawanguwe who will be hosted by national award winning students in Barrington. Nina Sethi, an alum from Barrington District 220 who co-founded the Teachpluralism program, taught Jean last year in Kigali, Rwanda at the Bridge program. She introduced the youth in Barrington as well as Africa to engage in a cultural exchange of ideas and be a resource for each other. Subsequently, many of the youth here embraced the idea and are in touch by email with youth from various countries in Africa. Nina Sethi is a teacher at Sheridan School in Washington DC.
Jean was born in Rwanda, Africa and is enrolled in a University in Berne, Germany to study computer science.
Rwanda is a landlocked country situated in Eastern Africa, most famous for being the home of the endangered mountain gorilla.
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The youth engaging in the cultural exchange program are also winners of the elite Points of Light program run by the White House. These youth have created, organized, implemented innovative projects benefitting a wide range of causes. On April 13th this year the team at Chess Without Borders was awarded the highest national award for their combination of chess education with service. The award is from the White House Points of Light Foundation. The team has raised almost $130,000 for local and global charities and engaged hundreds of chess students as social entrepreneurs. “ The program has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations”, said Rishi Sethi the founder of the program at Chess Without Borders, and now a founder of Method Mill a Data Analysis company in New York.
Read here about the award:
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http://www.pointsoflight.org/blog/2016/04/13/service-minded-chess-club-i...
"Congratulations on your students and administrators being selected as a Daily Point of Light Award honoree for your work empowering young children to make service a part of their lives through Chess Without Borders. The Daily Point of Light award is a national award that originated out of the White House in 1989 under President George H.W. Bush. It is given to exceptional volunteers who go above and beyond in their call to service. "
Caroline Hendrix from Points Of Light
These youth are not resting on their laurels. Because of their social entrepreneurial roles some of the high school students have served as delegates to the Youth UN in New York each year. This year Siddharth Gehlaut, Rohan Ahuja, Nabeel Rasheed and Eleanore van Marjwik Kooy will represent Chess Without Borders at the UN.
In addition to the rich cultural exchange, the team plans on introducing Jean to a vibrant artistic, intellectual, social, scene here in Barrington. Jean will be a guest of Nina Sethi at 5 Sara Lane in Barrington Hills. Adult mentors from the program such as Zein Bertacchi and Dr Kiran Frey will provide supervision and introduce Jean to the wide range of culinary arts here in Barrington.
The youth serving in the program are:
Ethan Gagliano, Pranav and Prashant Ramachandra, Prathik Kandimalla, Jack and Jane Bradley, Vishal, Varun and Rohan Ahuja, Millen and Jeeven Srivastava, Eleanore van Marwijk Kooy, Kyla Smith, Aryan and Ayushi Shah, Toby Schwartz, Siddharth and Abhijeet Gehlaut, Yasoob and Nabeel Rasheed, Jack Bongiorno, Sanjaya and Sahitya Maheswaran, Lyle and Zach Green, Sophia Cai, Julie Ann Ashley, Rishi Ray and Sathvik Rachamarla
For any ideas/questions email Kiran at chesswob@gmail.com or call 847 382 5410
